


Your Rocky Spine

by dragontamer



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Shenanigans, TRASH FIC FOR THE TRASH GODS, also known as the new canon and nobody can tell me otherwise, amberpricefield road trip yall, lisvn, lisvn verse, nobody dies in a bathroom, not angst for once! yay, rachel amber is a v. complicated character and i love her
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-05-31 18:53:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6483064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragontamer/pseuds/dragontamer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little green sign rushed towards them on the side of the highway: <em>Arcadia Bay City Limit.</em> Chloe punched the roof of the cabin and whooped. Rachel held her breath for the two seconds it took to pass it, irrationally afraid that the ocean would rise up and crash into the car. But they kept racing forward—and then there was nothing ahead of them except the road and the trees and the grey sky. “That’s it!” Chloe yelled. “That’s fucking it, the inmates have officially escaped the asylum.”</p>
<p>Max popped a CD into the car stereo, paged to a song bright as the California sun, and cranked up the volume.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Love is Strange](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/188044) by teamrumblebee. 



> Whoo boy. It is day 5 post release and here I am. Churning out fic because I just really want more of these guys. Spoilers for Chloe and Rachel's routes.
> 
> General notes on this: it's not going to be fluff, necessarily, because these are all complex and flawed people. That said, I promise you it won't be an angst extravaganza either and this fic is absolutely not going to wallow in any heartbreaking themes. Fic goal: the best possible timeline where they're all in character. Which will probably be an overall comfy, if sort of twisted, ride.
> 
> I've said it before, but major props to the LISVN team. I loved this game before that stupid ending and their work a) made me fall in love with it again b) gave me a nice AU to run around in c) gave me more Rachel Amber, which is all I wanted from the game by the end really.

Max burst through the door. It was obvious how the meeting went from her shit eating grin. "They said it's okay. I can go!"

Rachel stopped worrying her earring for the first time in what felt like an hour, broke into a smile. She lunged for Max and wrapped her in a hug. Max flushed and almost, almost wrapped her arms around the other girl’s back. Her hands hovered dangerously close to Rachel's shoulder, trembled in the air, but didn’t quite touch down. Chloe shifted her weight onto her left foot and glared out the window.

It was great, really. A road trip with both her best friends. A road trip to California, land of orange trees and rolling hills and suntan and sick parties, of bonfires on the beach. A road trip where three girls enter and two girls leave, where Chloe would probably need to drop Max back off in the Bay after a few weeks whether or not she wanted to keep driving into the horizon, a road trip where Rachel would evaporate into the SoCal sunshine—she had said, hands up, pleading, she had said that Chloe could try to find work in the city, that the agency’s temporary housing was only for a few months. But a few months was a long time for someone starting a brand new life, and Chloe didn’t want to throw her life upside down just to go work in another diner. They both knew it.

Whatever. Like she wanted to tag along and watch Rachel get with some new (piece of shit) asshole like Frank, anyway. Fuck that. She was leaving everyone and everything in this godforsaken town behind.

“Chloe?" Max had broken out of Rachel's hug and sunken in on herself again, shoulders hunched.

Chloe forced herself to grin. "That's awesome. Would have been stupid as fuck to delay my grand escape for nothing."

Rachel wrapped her arm around Max's shoulders and it totally didn't bother Chloe at all. She tipped her head to the side so that it was resting on top of Max's, her hair spilling over Max's shoulder, onto Max’s neck and collarbone and hoodie.

Chloe shifted her weight, again. It didn't help. Her boots kept pinching the shit out of her ankles. "So, dude, what's the plan?"

"I take a semester to travel and work on a photography series, and I get credit for it. Keep my scholarship. It's like, a guided study thing. I'll need to make up some credits when I get back over the summer, but Mx. Dog already said they would be my supervisor, and Mr. Wells said it was okay." Max glanced up at Chloe, then at Rachel, and the two of them shared a weirdly intense stare. Which was like, totally cool because Chloe loved them both so if they were tight now, that was solid and good for them. What the fuck, though.

Max reached out and grabbed Chloe's hand. Her grin widened further than Chloe would’ve thought possible, so wide her cheeks bunched up and her smushed her eyes into crinkles. "I am so excited to be able to go with you." She squeezed Chloe's hand on the "excited", for emphasis. "It’ll be like playing pirates again, but so much better. A real adventure, for once."

Something tight in Chloe's sternum loosened and popped free. The tension lancing through her abdomen drained out of her, and she wrapped Max in a hug. The words "I am so fucking stoked you're coming" dropped out of her own mouth without hurting even the littlest bit, without taking any effort to vocalize at all.

Chloe inadvertently met Rachel's eye over Max's shoulder. Rachel was smirking, lips plush and shimmering with her latest lipgloss. Chloe cocked an eyebrow and Rachel's smile just flashed wider in return, with teeth.

_Weirdo_ , Chloe mouthed.

Rachel formed a heart with her index fingers and thumbs and raised the shape up to her chest. Her hands flared open like wings.

_Love you too_ , Chloe thought, and flipped her off. Rachel rolled her eyes.

* * *

Chloe’s hands shook unscrewing the fifth of Fireball, she chugged it and struggled through a fit of coughs, she gripped Rachel’s wrists in her hands with clammy palms, tight enough to pinch ten half-moons into Rachel’s forearms. She bounced on her own bed with no music on at all, laughed too loud and too hard at a nonexistent joke. Chloe’s emotions always broke out of her sideways, subverted. Anxiety into enthusiasm.

_Grief into anger_ , Rachel thought, and knocked back a mouthful off the bottle. The burn barely registered.

“We’re fucking doing it, Rachel, we’re getting out of this town.” Chloe bounced off the edge of the bed and grabbed her hands again. “How sick is that? How absolutely sick is that?”

Rachel nodded. “Fuck Arcadia Bay.”

“ _Fuck_ Arcadia Bay!”

L.A. and what wouldn’t come after stayed unsaid.

The doorbell dinged, _Max_ , and Chloe barreled out of the room. Not entirely unlike a blue haired golden retriever, for all of her spiked jewelry.

Rachel arranged herself on the end of the bed, her long (but not long enough) legs crossed. To any observers in the doorway, she’d be haloed by the light streaming in through the flag. It dusted everything in the room pink and blue. It even made the pile of Chloe’s dufflebags in the corner shimmer, ethereal, huddled miniature mountains instead of black sacks. Her moving bins sat next to them. Rachel’s life, distilled down to five purple tubs, not enough to even fill the bed of a truck. The agency had wanted to know if she’d needed mover recommendations and she’d had to smother the incredulous smile on her face before responding.

She fiddled with her phone and looked up her checking account balance, for what was easily the tenth time that day. _It’s real_ , she told herself, staring at the comma. _It’s real_.

Chloe and Max stomped back up the stairs (Chloe yelling, Max weakly laughing). Rachel pocketed her phone. She made sure to catch Max’s eyes when she entered and the girl froze in the doorway, stricken. Chloe accidentally bumped into her.

Rachel brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled. _Warm. Welcoming._ “Hey.”

Max visibly struggled for words.

Chloe hip checked her and strode over to the old CRT television. “Earth to Mad Max. Okay, one last grand sleepover, for old times sake starts—Rachel, bring over the comforter, would you? And pillows. It’s blanket fort time.”

The three of them managed to build a lopsided tent with a combination of the chair and nightstand, lined with pillows along the floor. Chloe accidentally fell over backwards on the nightstand in the process, but she just laughed and waved for Max to put the fifth away. “Okay, shit, we need popcorn. Don’t start it without me,” she told them, and shut the door behind herself.

It was the first time they had really been alone since Sunday. Max had been swamped getting her schoolwork sorted, and Rachel had been packing. And saying goodbye. Max’s panic radiated off of her in waves. She had _really_ strong vibes. Rachel slid under the makeshift tent and stretched out on her stomach in front of the tv, propped up on her elbow. She patted the space next to her. “Come on in.”

Max ducked under the blanket and scooted in next to Rachel, gingerly, maintaining a four inch gap between them at all times, even though it meant rolling out against the blanket wall. She pushed herself up onto her elbow too, and flashed a smile that would have been dashing if she didn’t look so obviously terrified. “So. Come here often?”

Rachel chuckled and shifted forward, pressing their torsos and lips together. Max gasped, and Rachel took the opportunity to suck the girl’s bottom lip between her own teeth. Max clutched at Rachel’s upper arm. _Adorable._

Rachel pulled back when she heard Chloe’s boots on the stairs. Max struggled to catch her breath, open-mouthed, eyes unfocused. “Oh.”

Rachel brushed back some of the hair from Max’s face, ran her thumb across the girl’s cheek. It was peppered with freckles, warm to the touch. “You are really cute.”

Max’s expression shifted into a lopsided smile. “You’re—”

“Okay!” Chloe slammed the door. “Popcorn acquired. It is go time, compadres. _Little Miss Sunshine_?”

“Awesome movie,” Rachel flipped herself back onto her stomach by the time Chloe crossed the room enough to see them.

Chloe plopped down into the open space to Rachel’s right and crammed a handful of the popcorn into her mouth, dropping the bowl on the floor. “Damn straight. I figure, roadtrip hype, right? Max, you ever see it?”

“No.” Max’s voice sounded strained.

“You’re in for a treat.” Rachel dug into the bowl herself, though it was mostly for show. She didn’t really have the calories left in the day for the whiskey and popcorn both. “It is great.”

They watched, mostly in silence. Rachel didn’t take much of it in. They had two weeks before she absolutely needed to be in L.A., but the agency had go and sees daily that she was missing out on. A lot of bookings she was a good fit for, they said, though of course her height closed her off from most of their editorial shoots. Rachel Amber was no Devin Aoki. At least, that’s what they thought. For now. But commercial print was something, it was a start, it was paid. _Unfortunately on the low end of the petite range for us, but your versatility is impressive_ , the rep had said. She fought down the urge to whip out her phone and check her account again.

It was a start. All she needed was a connection. Somebody to take her under their wing and get people to see past her height. And that was fine. Rachel Amber made her own luck. All it took was one person, one talented motherfucker with a camera and a big name, one friend in the right place. All she needed to do was find them, and reach out to them, and of course they’d help her. She would do whatever it took to make them want to. She’d get her shot.

_Fuck_ Arcadia Bay.

* * *

Every nerve in Max’s body was burning itself alive.

She watched the popcorn bag inflate, slowly, watched the numbers tick down on the microwave. _Get a grip. Could you be any more cliche? Jesus. “I’m on fire?”_

It didn’t matter what she told herself, though. Her legs were unsteady. Her underwear was almost definitely ruined too which was just, really pathetic. _Come on. Deep breaths, Caulfield._

Mr. Madsen cleared his throat behind her. “Max.” It rumbled out of his throat, one prolonged growl.

Max whirled around and forced a polite smile. She hadn’t seen much of David. He was a cloudy peripheral on the edge of Chloe’s life, a glowering face at breakfast. A voice barking out names in the hallways. “Hi, Mr. Madsen.”

“I heard about how you worked this out with the school.” His words fell hard, an accusation.

“Yeah. It was really rad of Mix Dog to be my sponsor. They—”

Madsen snorted.

Max stood up a little straighter. “ _They_ came up with the idea, too.”

After a pause, he jerked his head in a curt nod. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Max.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

He worked his jaw and glanced to the side. The microwave still _whirred_ behind her. It was popping impossibly slowly. “You look out for them on the road. Chloe’s got no concept of danger. Rachel’s damn attracted to it. Don’t let them push you around if you’ve got a bad feeling about whatever foolishness they want to get up to.”

Max clenched her hands together. “That’s not fair. Rachel and Chloe can handle themselves, they’re nineteen. I’m eighteen. They’re—they’re good people. We’re all adults.”

For a second the air was thick and heavy, but then he broke out laughing. Hard laughs from his diaphragm, head thrown back. He looked like a different person when he was smiling. Max fought down the urge to bolt for the stairs. The microwave timer went off and she jolted, fumbled for the door, a bowl.

“I’ll leave you girls to your little slumber party,” he said to her back, and walked away.

Well. At least that took her mind off her pants.

“You get the popcorn next time,” she said as she walked into the bedroom. “Your step dad was being totally weird.”

The room was dark except for the glow of the television and the diffused moonlight from the window. They were working their way through _Blade Runner_ now, also at Chloe’s insistence. Max rounded the blanket fort, hoping that there was still that open spot next to Rachel. Hoping that Chloe had rolled into the middle to save her from herself.

Rachel wasn’t there. Chloe was propped on her side against the pillows, a line of drool working its way from the corner of her mouth onto the pillow. “She passed out,” Rachel’s voice floated through the room. It came from the bed.

_RIP Max Caulfield,_ she thought to herself, and walked towards it.

“Not sure if it’s the drinking or if she’s just tired. She’s a total lightweight, though.”

The room was approximately two hundred and fifty yards long. Max put the bowl on the floor and stepped around it. Rachel was sitting stretched out on the bare mattress, pushed on her elbows. They had all thrown on pajamas in between films. Rachel’s top clung to her like a second skin and she was wearing shorts that rested below her hips and cut to her mid thigh. The moonlight from the window highlighted every curve of her in bright white and navy shadow and Max couldn’t breathe. She climbed onto the bed, somehow managing not to trip over herself.

“Do you have a favorite movie?” Rachel turned her head to the side and her hair spilled over her chest, glinting in the light. She smelled of lavender.

Max, despite everything, somehow managed to speak coherent words. _Okay Maxarino, that's two out of two. You can do this._ “It’s really hard to pick. I like _Breakfast Club_ a lot. _Perks of Being a Wallflower_. What—what about you?”

Rachel hummed. “Awesome choices. I love them too.” She wrapped her fingers into Max’s own, stared up at the ceiling, thinking. She studied Max for a second before speaking, her expression unusually serious. “ _Breakfast at Tiffany’s_.”

“That’s that old Audrey Hepburn one, right? They talked about it a little in my cinematography class.”

Rachel nodded. “Yeah.” She tilted her head to the side, smirked. “I was thinking. It’s not a slumber party without a game of truth or dare, right?”

Her eyes almost glowed, luminescent. Max’s pulse pounded behind her eyes, her fingertips itched for her camera. “I guess.”

“Fucking rad. Truth or dare, Max?”

“Truth.”

“Lame,” Rachel said, and sighed. “Alright. What was the last person you dated like?”

_Oh, god._ Max pushed down the urge to roll over and bury her face in the mattress and just never move again.

Rachel cocked an eyebrow. “You know, your last steady?”

“You are going to think I’m so uncool,” Max said.

“It’s part of your charm. Cool isn’t all it’s hyped up to be.” Rachel shifted up onto her elbow. “But please don’t say Warren. I’ll owe Chloe twenty bucks.”

Max hid her face in the crook of her arm. “No one,” she mumbled.

Silence.

“What?”

“Warren did like me, but he was kind of pushy and I wasn’t like— _into_ him, you know? And, uh, that’s it.”

Another pause. “Have you ever—”

“No. I know, it’s mega stupid.”

Rachel gently gripped Max’s wrist and plucked her arm away from her face. “It’s kind of sweet, actually. Just, surprising.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of a turbo nerd, so, yeah. Who would even want to, you know?”

Rachel leaned over Max and kissed her again, deliberately. She tasted like cinnamon candy gone sour. Locks of her hair tumbled over Max’s chest, incense, reeking of lavender and burning sage. Max reached up and pressed a shaking hand into the curve of the woman’s waist.

Rachel pulled back. The woman reached up for her feather earring, frowned when her fingertips closed down on air. “Max. I don’t know what’s going to happen, after we get to L.A. I’m going to be there for a long time. Maybe forever. You’d probably be better off with something stable.”

Max thought about it, for all of a two seconds. Then she reached up, cradled Rachel’s cheek in her palm. She wrapped Rachel's thick hair between her fingers and pulled the other woman back down.

Her high-wire mind caught everything as a series of snapshots, pasted on a wall, out of sequence. The light pooling in the hollow of Rachel’s throat, electric blue. Rachel straddling her thigh, Rachel’s hip bones under her thumbs, cast in stark relief in the light. Rachel resting her fingertips under the waistband of Max’s pants, meeting her eyes, expression unreadable. “Can you be quiet?” Max had nodded. Rachel breathed something, but Max didn’t hear her, Max blanched white, overexposed, a strip of film dumped out of its canister and unrolled in the California sun. She reached out—Rachel nodded, and shifted herself closer—the softest part of her under Max’s hands. For a few heartbeats Rachel shook, raw and uncomposed.

_No photo I’m ever going to take is going to be half as beautiful as this_.

The realization should have bothered her, but all Max felt was sudden, overwhelming exhaustion. Rachel shifted back onto the mattress and started to trace abstract designs on Max’s abdomen, under her shirt. She met Max’s dopey smile with her own. “You okay?”

“Way better than okay.” Max said. “Totally worth it.”

Rachel said nothing for awhile, continued to draw concentric circles across Max’s stomach with her fingertip. Max’s eyes drifted shut, felt her own breathing even by the time Rachel spoke again. “Feel any different?”

Max pushed herself back up out of sleep, blinked her eyes open. Rachel was staring at her still, half-smiling. Max hesitated, turned the question over in her head. “No,” she said. “Weird. I thought I would feel older.”

Rachel laughed. “Most people are like that, I think.” She settled herself into the mattress next to Max, kissed her temple. “Sweet dreams.”

_I’m already in one_ , Max said, or tried to say, but couldn’t quite pull herself together. Everything faded to grey.


	2. Chapter 2

The plastic ridges on the bin’s edge dug into Rachel’s palms as she hoisted it into the truck bed, Joyce helping her with the other end. “That’s the last one of mine.”

Something crashed to the ground inside the house. “Shit!” Chloe yelled, and broke down laughing. Rachel could hear Max’s chuckle underneath, intertwined.

“It’s always good having Max around the house again. You should have seen how she and Chloe would get on as kids.”

Rachel tilted back her head and let herself giggle. “I bet they raised hell.”

Joyce exhaled, long, and crossed her arms. “No, honey.”  _Unlike you two_ hung in the air, unspoken. “Most trouble they ever got into was climbing up the cupboards to get at the jam jar and dropping it all over the kitchen floor. There was always so much laughter in the house. Good to see that Max hasn’t changed much. She’s always been such a sweet girl.” 

Last night, Max had reached out for Rachel with wide eyes, like she was about to run her hands over spun glass. “Yeah. She’s golden.”

Max and Chloe stumbled through the door, both beaming, Chloe tugging Max forward with one hand and hauling a guitar outside with her other. Max waved a polaroid back and forth in the air to dry. She met Rachel’s eyes, and her smile shifted into something  _ else, _ something soft. Rachel waved her fingers at her, and Joyce stepped out of Chloe’s way as the two of them rounded the back of the truck. She hefted the guitar above her head with both hands and whooped.

“Chloe—” Joyce said, warning in her throat.

“I’m being careful!” Chloe gingerly took the last few steps towards the truck bed on tiptoes and lowered the guitar down on it, with exaggerated care. “See. Totally gentle with the instrument.” She slammed the tailgate up into position and pounded the side of her fist against the metal. “Go time, yo! Come on dudes, get in the car.”

They did, Max sliding into the middle of the bench and Rachel shutting the passenger side door behind her. She saw Joyce pull Chloe to her chest in the rearview mirror, every line on the woman’s face stark in the morning light. 

Max curled her hands together in her lap, not quite meeting Rachel’s eyes, even though they were both smiling. The anxiety that normally racked Max had been completely absent in her sleep—the contrast in the daylight was painfully noticeable against what Rachel had woken up to. The soft contours of her face dusted with freckles, her expression completely slack. It was all twisted into a pensive set of lines when she was awake. Even her smiles were colored with a touch of anxiety. Rachel reached out and squeezed her hand.

Max squeezed back. Her shoulders fell, a little, a rope loosening. “Hey.”

Chloe and Joyce rounded the car, and Rachel dropped Max’s hand. Max noticed that—her eyes darted to Chloe, back to Rachel. She bit her lip and took in a breath, started to speak, stopped. Rachel nodded towards the polaroid in Max’s hands. “Can I see it?”

Max tilted it towards her. “It’s not that great. Just, wanted to catch Chloe in her room before she left.”

Pink light filled the shot. Max had somehow managed to frame the lines that had tracked Chloe’s height as a child against Chloe’s silhouette, a series of ticks contrasted against the curve of her back. Chloe was standing braced, elbows jutting out and hands in her pockets, head tilted back like she was about to kick back against the ground and fly.  _ I CAN’T SLEEP  _ hung in the background, sharp and soft at the same time. Rachel’s breath caught in her throat. The amount of detail Max could capture without even being able to focus the camera or adjust the shutter speed was awe inspiring. She just somehow knew which moment to reach out and pull out of time, the perfect way to frame an eternity in a 3x3 inch square.

David cleared his throat. He had stepped out of the house at some point, and he was holding a steel briefcase the size of a textbook between his hands.  “Chloe.”

“Stepdizzle.”

His eyebrows knit themselves together, but he let the name slide without comment. “Things on the road can get dangerous. Especially for young women like yourself and your friends, here.”

Chloe shoved her hands into her pocket and cocked her chin upward, no doubt about to fire back with something biting.

“Now, I know you never did get your CCW . But you did well out on the range.”

Joyce tilted her head to the side and pursed her lips, staring hard at David. Chloe had mentioned that to Rachel, over text:  _ darlingest steppykins saw me eying his totally not phallic overcompensation gun collection and offered to take me “out to the range.” better tell all your haters to watch out bc i am hella fly with a 44 :)  _ It clicked for Rachel, loud as a round sliding into a chamber.  _ Motherfucker. _

“So. I wanted to give you something to protect yourself on the road. This Glock served me good these past few years. You keep it in the car and your motel rooms in case of trouble.”

“Hell yes!” Chloe reached out for the case.

Joyce put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. Her voice was velvet stretched out over barbed wire. “David. You are not giving my  _ daughter _ a  _ gun. _ ”

“Mom, I’ll be careful with it.”

“Like hell you will. David,  _ what _ are you thinking? The girl will shoot herself.”

“I will not!”

“My dad gave me my first rifle when I was half her age.”

_ "David." _

Rachel leaned across Max so that she could stick her head and shoulders out of the driver’s side window. She fixed a smile on her face.  _ Warm, non-threatening, apologetic. _ “Chloe. I thought you believed in gun control?”

Chloe bit her lip and looked from the gun case, to Rachel, to the gun case again. Rachel raised both her eyebrows and tilted her smile.  _ Extremely  _ apologetic. Chloe heaved out a lungful of air and shrugged. “Yeah. Sorry dude, I’m gonna have to pass.”

David shifted the case under his shoulder and nodded, wordlessly.

Chloe stuck out her hand. “Thanks though, that would have been badass.”

His face trembled for a second before settling back into his default glower. He shook her hand. “Pick up a can of bear spray if you plan on camping.”

Chloe tugged open the driver’s side door and hauled herself into the seat, slammed it shut. Joyce stood there next to the open window, smiling, but the lines in her face looked deeper than ever. “Going off to see the world. You remind me so much of your father when he was younger. He would be so proud of you.”

Chloe cringed. “Thanks, Mom.” Voice thick. She fiddled with the rearview mirror. “You have a good couple of days, or weeks, or whatever. I’ll call.”

“Of course, honey. Max, take care out there. Rachel, I am so happy for you and your big new job.”

“Thank you so much! I’m so excited.”

Chloe turned over the key and the engine rolled to life. She put the car into reverse. “Love you.” The words tumbled out of her mouth, rushed and muffled. She said it without meeting her mother’s eyes.

“Love you too, honey.”

Chloe looked over her shoulder and backed up the truck and that was it, they were headed out. She didn’t look into the rearview mirror as they drove off her childhood street, her face set somewhere between a grin and a grimace, her knuckles white on the wheel. She drove them straight to the highway, even though they had talked about swinging by the lighthouse before they left, earlier.

There was something that always called to Rachel, there. In her dreams she had been lighting a bong in Frank’s RV and Pompidou had gone crazy out of nowhere, snarling. There had been a deer-woman staring in at her from the window. The woman was looking straight through her and there was a storm outside and she was mouthing  _ something. _ And then the dream had probably been invaded by the popcorn she had eaten, or the whiskey, because a giant anthropomorphic hot dog with Mx. Dog’s haircut had stepped in front of the window and shooed the deer-woman away.

Rachel had woken up with her heart in her throat and her head pounding, even with the ridiculous ending. It wasn’t a great omen, but maybe it was just the Bay’s way of telling her that it hated to see her leave. But. She had skipped meditating. It was probably for the best that they were avoiding the lighthouse and just getting on the road.

_ (Her heart hadn’t stopped pounding when she had woken up—Max had fallen asleep on her chest, and the girl’s head felt heavy as a fucking anchor. Rachel had struggled to breathe under the weight pressing down on her heart. Max looked young in the daylight, but at night she gleamed porcelain doll, completely oblivious to everyone and everything but her own dreams, limp, terrifyingly vulnerable.) _

Max’s low voice interrupted her train of thought. Thankfully. “So the app says we’re not going to make it to Crater Lake until tomorrow. But we’re probably going to be around Eugene for lunchtime.”

Chloe nodded, but didn’t say anything. Not even a joke about how they could pick up “party supplies.” Her face was still drawn, and her grip on the wheel was way too tight.

Rachel shifted herself so that she was leaning into the part of the cabin where the truck door met the bench and dangled one of her hands out the window. She ran her fingers through the wind and stretched her legs out across the bench. “Across the bench” meaning: lower thighs across Max and her heels in Chloe’s lap. Chloe snorted and glanced over to her, lips curling up into an incredulous smile— _ What the fuck, Rachel? _ —she just grinned and wiggled her toes. Chloe grabbed her feet by the ankles and dropped them on the floor. “Fuck off, God,” she said, but she was laughing when she said it. Good.

Max glanced over to her and just beamed, genuine, like she was being lit up from the inside and it was shining out of her. She rested her hands on top of Rachel’s legs, her fingers splayed wide and her touch impossibly gentle. Rachel felt her expression drop into something—she didn’t know, but she could tell that it wasn’t playful—she felt her stomach roll (or had that just been a bump in the road)?

Chloe had been staring at them, a second too long. She jerked her eyes forward.

_ Fuck. _

A little green sign rushed towards them on the side of the highway:  _ Arcadia Bay City Limit. _ Chloe punched the roof of the cabin and whooped. Rachel held her breath for the two seconds it took to pass it, irrationally afraid that the ocean would rise up and crash into the car. But they kept racing forward—and then there was nothing ahead of them except the road and the trees and the grey sky. “That’s it!” Chloe yelled. “That’s fucking it, the inmates have officially escaped the asylum.”

Max popped a CD into the car stereo, paged to a song bright as the California sun, and cranked up the volume.

* * *

 

Chloe tried to peel the tip the wrapper off her straw without looking like she was doing anything particularly devious. Rachel arched a lone eyebrow, but Max was too busy staring into space and smiling to notice. Perfect. Chloe whipped the straw up to her lips and puffed into it, nailing Max right between the eyes with the wrapper.

“Boom! 360 noscope, bitches.”

Max blinked, focused on Chloe. “Not even a warning shot off the starboard side. That’s low, even for Captain Bluebeard.”

Chloe tore off the edge of her napkin, licked her fingers, and rolled the scrap of paper into a ball. “Sorry, can’t hear you over the sound of how  _ absolutely wrecked you are. _ ”

Max tore one side of the wrapper off of her straw and aimed a shot at Chloe, but Chloe hurled herself onto the bench on her side of the booth in time to dodge it. She crammed her ammo into the straw and took a shot up over the edge of the table, missing Max’s head by inches.  Max managed to nail Chloe in the cheek with a spitball of her own—when had she made that? “Surrender, and maybe we’ll show you mercy.”

“You’ll never take me alive!” Chloe ducked under the table to reload. Max followed her, and managed to hit her in the collarbone.  _ Okay, that was massively fucking unfair.  _

Chloe noticed the waitresses’ legs  _ (nice) _ at the same time that she heard her ask, “Cheeseburger with fries?” She tried to pull out from under the table and banged her head into the edge.

“Fuck.”

“That’s hers,” Rachel said, smile thick in her voice.

Chloe waited until she saw the waitresses’ legs moving back across the diner before she lifted her head. Partly to hide her shame, partly because they were  _ really  _ tight. She raised her head up, finally, and saw Rachel resting her chin in her hands, fingers curled around her cheeks. She was always smiling, but some of her smiles looked a hell of a lot more passionate than others—this was a huge one, an  _ honest-to-god-Chloe-you’re-amazing _ one. She was practically glowing, she made everything in the shitty little diner sparkle just by being near her. It was fucking gross. “You guys are massively adorable.”

Chloe jabbed the straw in Rachel’s direction. “Hey. I am  _ dashing. _ ”

Rachel winked back at her. “Absolutely. I meant—” she twisted her wrist, gesturing to Max and Chloe both. “—you  _ two. _ Fucking cute.”

Chloe dug into her burger to hide what was no doubt a stupid fucking grin on her face.

“So what was that story Joyce wanted to tell at breakfast?” Rachel’s tone was so calm and neutral it almost avoided sounded mocking. Almost.

Chloe lowered her burger.  _ Oh, hell no. _ “How about you shut up and eat your stupid soup and salad, Rachel.”

Max grinned and put down her wrap. “When we were in second grade, Chloe was absolutely  _ obsessed  _ with Mulan.”

“Max, I swear to fucking god—“

“Let the woman speak, Chloe.” Rachel turned her eyes to Max. They were bright.

“Is it going to be like this the whole time? I will literally shove you guys out the side of the truck, do not test me.”

Max ignored her. “There was this tree on our grade school grounds. An oak. We named him Frederick.”

Rachel laughed. “Of course you did.”

“Chloe always had wanted to climb it, but the fork in the trunk was ten, twenty feet off the ground? We had tried to prop up sticks against it and walk up like a ramp. That’s how Chloe twisted her ankle for the first time.”

Rachel’s eyebrow lifted. “The first time.”

“The second time was the Jack Sparrow Incident.”

“The Jack Sparrow incident,” Rachel repeated again, grinning.

“But then she saw Mulan, and she was like ‘Max, this is the answer.’ So she took her scarf, and she just wrapped it around the trunk and started to haul herself up the tree. I gave her a boost, of course. The janitor ran up to try and stop her—”

Chloe slammed her palms onto the table. “And that is totally the end of anything interesting that happened that day, thanks Max!”

“And then—”

“The. End! Now that that’s out of the way. Rachel told me you’re both getting inked?”

Max’s smirk dropped. She dropped her wrap back on her plate. “Oh. Yeah. I was thinking about getting a doe? A little one.”

“Fucking sick, dude. You know where you want to place it yet?”

Max shook her head. “Not really. I wouldn’t want it to be super obvious. Maybe behind my ear?”

“Hmm.” Chloe took a few bites, chewed and talked while she thought. “That works, yeah. There’s your shoulder too, that’s pretty subtle and it’s more or less painless. It would be a waste though. You’ve got all that real estate on your back, and then you put a little bit of ink up in the corner that you’d have to work around if you wanted to use it later. Maybe top of your foot? That hurts a shit ton, though.”

Rachel put her hand on Max’s shoulder and leaned in closer, her earring dragging across the younger woman’s collarbone. “Chloe’s amazing,” Rachel murmured. “She designed her own sleeve.”

Max’s jaw dropped. “Seriously? I didn’t know you could do that. It looks  _ awesome. _ ”

Chloe shrugged. “I just did the linework, the artist handled the coloring. And actually inked it. That’s the hard part. But, uh, I was thinking. If you guys wanted me to, I could totally design your pieces.”

Rachel  tilted her head away and raised her hand, half-hiding her smile. Her voice shook when she spoke. “That would be  _ amazing. _ ”

Max bobbed her head. “Totally. That would rock.”

Something absolutely obnoxious clanged around in the empty spaces in Chloe’s lungs. She shoved the last of her burger in her mouth to try and muffle it. “Oh, it’s no big deal,” she said, the half-chewed food completely garbling anything in her throat that  _ maybe  _ would have sounded like she was lying, was anything less than totally cool and casual and unconcerned. “I’m thinking of getting something to memorialize the whole grand escape thing myself, so.”

Rachel reached out and touched her elbow. “Thank you. Seriously.”

“No big thing. If you want to repay me for my awesome services, you could get lunch.” Chloe waggled her eyebrows to show she was joking, and Rachel just laughed.

“Deal. Don’t order anything else, though.”

* * *

 

Chloe dropped her last duffle bag into the pile in the corner with the rest of their stuff. “Well, I don’t know about you but I smell fucking disgusting, since  _ someone _ hogged the bathroom all morning.”

Rachel shrugged from where she was stretched out on the king bed. She was scrolling through something or other on her phone. “You could have woken up earlier than me. You know how long it takes to straighten my hair.”

Chloe laughed. “And be up before ten? No thank you. I’m going to shower.”

The click of the bathroom door sounded abnormally loud in the room. Max lowered herself onto the edge of the bed as quietly as she could, like if she moved too quickly she would knock Rachel off. Knock both of them off. Knock—she filled her lungs slowly, deliberately.  _ Calm down, Max. _

Rachel looked up from her phone and smiled at her. The knot in Max’s throat loosened. She reached her hand out, and Max took it. Their fingers wove together, and the fit was perfect. “Hey, Max. How’re you feeling?”

Max turned that question over in her mind before answering. Rachel waited in silence, face open, lips curved upward. “Scared. Excited? I’ve never been to California before. But—how are  _ you  _ feeling?”

Rachel’s eyebrows lifted for a second before her expression settled back into a smile. “Sort of the same. This is it, you know? My whole life I’ve talked about going back to California, being a model, and now I’m doing it. I’m a little scared that it’s…” She pursed her lips and stared up at the ceiling. “It’s always been what I’ve wanted. What if I actually get it, but I’m still…” Rachel let the sentence trail off into the sound of the running shower. She shook her head. “Actually, Max, I was wondering more about how you were feeling about—yesterday. This.”

She turned Max’s hand over in her own and traced her index finger along the inside of Max’s wrist. She was drawing some kind of abstract design, dotted, defined by hard angles. Max swallowed a bit of nervous laugher. “Same answer. I’m scared. And excited. I have  _ no idea _ what I’m doing. At all. But I really,  _ really _ want to figure it out.”

Rachel nodded. Her expression was calm, but not—it wasn’t readable. Max tried to will her pulse back to normal, but it pounded heavy through her wrists. Rachel could probably feel her heartbeat through the skin. The other woman’s voice was light when she did finally speak, neutral. “It doesn’t bother you that we’re not—‘steady?’”

Max swallowed. “I mean, I’m going to miss you when you go to L.A. And this is a little, different, but—so fucking what?” Rachel jerked her head upwards, her eyes staring hard into Max’s face. Max took in a shuddering breath and plowed forward, her voice shaking with her own vehemence—“So we’re not exchanging promise rings under the bleachers or whatever. This is  _ real, _ and I don’t know about you but I feel fucking amazing—this feels  _ right. _ And good. And, whatever happens, happens, but right now this is fucking  _ great _ and I want to just take it for what it is.” Max met Rachel’s wide-eyed stare, heart shuddering in her throat. “No expectations, right?”

Rachel let out a shaking breath, one Max hadn’t noticed her holding, and crushed Max in a hug. She pulled back and her expression lanced straight through Max—Max caught joy in it, at least, mixed in with whatever else. “You’re a fucking treasure, do you know that?  _ God. _ ”

Max, feeling twenty feet tall, curled all of her fingers into a fist except for her pinky, held out her hand to Rachel. “Pinky swear. No expectations.”

Rachel laughed, thickly, and hooked her little finger around Max’s. “No expectations.”

Max closed the distance between them. Rachel’s lipgloss tasted like mint, but kissing her was—it shot straight through Max’s spinal cord, knocked her off balance, made her glad they were sitting, because otherwise she wasn’t sure that she’d manage to stay upright. She really had  _ no  _ idea what she was doing—she reached up and buried one of her hands in Rachel’s hair (soft, thick, heavy between her fingers) and with her other ran her thumb across Rachel’s jaw, pressed her palm against the side of Rachel’s face. 

Rachel pulled away, and Max felt her stomach drop from under her until she noticed it too—the running water had stopped. 

_ Right. Chloe. _

“I am worried about—do you think Chloe is going to be upset?”

Rachel sighed and sank back down into the pillows. She looked  _ exhausted, _ all at once. “To put it mildly. First I abandon her for L.A., now this. She’s going to be really hurt if she finds out.”

Max’s froze. “ _ If? _ Rachel, I don’t want to lie to her.”

Rachel tilted her head to the side and gnawed on her lip. “It’s not lying, really. It’s an omission. Sometimes it’s better to use discretion, you know? She’s going to be really hurt if she finds out.”

“But–it’s still keeping the truth from her. The hurtful thing is happening either way. Chloe deserves to know.”

Rachel shrugged and took Max’s hand in her own, upturned it, squinted down at Max’s palm. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “I just—wouldn’t want her to be upset.” Rachel traced her fingertip along the lines on Max’s hand, her face tipped forward, her breath rolling across Max’s skin—Max felt her cheeks flushing, again. Rachel froze all of a sudden, hissed in an intake of breath. “The fuck?”

“What is it?”

“Your spirit line is really messed up.” Rachel twisted Max’s hand in her own and squinted at it. “It looks like it just stops up here towards the top, out of nowhere, and then keeps going after into this long squiggle. Multiple breaks. And it’s almost, curling in on itself? I’ve never seen a line like this before.”

Max leaned in, to try to see what Rachel saw, but the etchings in her hand just looked like random lines to her. “Is that bad?”

“I don’t—I have no idea what it means. If it just continued unbroken as long as it is, it would mean that you were really well attuned to the supernatural. But it’s all spazzed out. Really weird.” Rachel flicked her gaze back up to Max. She held the look for a long moment, smirked, and then gently kissed the tips of Max’s fingers. With tongue. Max’s entire body  _ thudded, _ for a second.

The bathroom door clicked open and Max turned around to see Chloe, staring at both of them. Rachel had sat up straight, but she was clutching Max’s hand.

“Chloe—” Rachel started to say—

“So.” Chloe laced her fingers together behind the back of her head and fixed her gaze at a stain on the wall behind them. “Are you guys, uh. Something’s going on, right?”

Rachel finally dropped Max’s hand. She hesitated a long second, met Max’s eyes, and then nodded. Max spoke up. “Yeah.”

Chloe nodded back. “Thought so,” she said, her voice unreadable. “Were you guys going to tell me, or…”

“I was,” Max said. “We just—we’re still figuring out what that means, you know? With her moving, and.”

Chloe bobbed her head, mechanical. “Sure.”

Max glanced up at Rachel. Rachel was looking at Chloe, wide-eyed, rigid in place. She opened her mouth like she was trying to say something, then closed it again.

“I need to grab some fresh air.” Chloe shoved on her boots. “I’ll be back in a few.”

Rachel pushed herself off the bed. “Chloe—”

Chloe shook her head. “It’s cool, dude. I just need a minute, okay?”

Rachel stopped, glanced back to Max. Max shook her head. Sometimes Chloe needed space, and sometimes she didn’t—from the way she was tugging on her jacket, brusque, chin down and eyes glaring at nothing, it seemed like it was really one of the times where she was better off alone. Or at least, she wanted them to think so. That was the trouble. Chloe reached for the door, turned the knob.

They let her go. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A fuck ton of thanks to Saix for encouraging my insanity and scheming out the future of this story with me. Kudos to Agles and Frac for being awesome ~~guinea pigs~~ betas.
> 
> There's a really well fleshed out outline written, granular down to the chapter level, so you can say this is getting pretty serious famalam.


	3. Chapter 3

A warm weight settled over Chloe—she pushed herself out of sleep, somehow, managed to raise her head. Rachel was laying out a blanket over her feet. She looked up and caught Chloe’s eyes. Rachel drew back her hands, curled her fingers around the truck bed walls. The lone yellow spotlight shining down on the parking lot lit up her face, barely. Badly.

“Yo.” Chloe shoved herself up until she was sitting upright and braced against the back of the cab and rubbed the seeds out of her eyes. Rachel hopped up, swung her leg over the walls of the bed, and rolled in next to Chloe. She just did it, practically floating, all one fluid motion, and Chloe knew her knee was bruised from trying to hike herself up over the tailgate. Chloe felt around the bed for her joint, found it, and lit up. She took a hit, let the smoke soak through her throat.

Rachel took the joint from Chloe’s fingers, touching her for one acutely sharp, drawn out second. Her lips curled around it. She tipped her head back and breathed. They both watched the smoke unfurl into the night, lit up pale yellow.

“When Frank texted me all frantic trying to get ahold of you or whatever, it mostly sucked because you never told me. At least you said something this time, right?”

Rachel choked on her hit, her eyes wide. Chloe took back the joint and breathed in another lungful. Rachel worried the edge of her earring with her fingertips.

“I told him to go fuck himself, by the way. Don’t know if that made a difference or not.”

“Chloe, I—I could never figure out how to explain it—” Rachel froze. “That’s why you ghosted me for a week back in September. Is that—we were always going to get out of the Bay, and you saved enough for a road trip, and you didn’t ask me to come with you. You didn’t tell me about it until you were about to get on the road.”

Chloe took another hit. She could feel it starting to kick in, everything going a little brighter, a little lighter. She let them both sit in the silence, let that talk for her while she gathered up her thoughts and forced them up out of herself. “You’ve got your modelling thing. Max has got her photography. Fuck, everyone in Blackwell wants to be famous, one way or another. All I want is to not be fucking miserable. But I don’t know how to make that happen. I like going to concerts and smoking, I don’t have—I don’t have a _game plan_ , you know. So I figure, get a change of scenery, figure that shit out, before I get too old, right?”

Rachel took the joint back from Chloe. They watched the smoke billow out across the tarmac. They could see the motel pool from their vantage point in the truck, glowing bright blue, underlit. “I wrote you so many letters, trying to tell you.”

Chloe dug into her pocket for her phone. The only thing she could think of saying to that was _Why didn’t you give me them, then_. And she had a pretty good idea where that track would lead and holy shit, no fucking thank you. She had four missed texts.

They were all from Rachel. She skimmed them— _are you ok? chloe i love you, so fucking much, i couldn’t fucking handle it if you hated me—_ Rachel was watching her read them. Chloe put her phone away. Rachel smiled tentatively up at her, her eyebrows furrowed, fingers still on her earring.

“You’re such a nerd.”

Rachel half-gasped and half-laughed. “ _Excuse me_?”

“You heard me. Those are some desperate measures, dude. Dropping the l bomb.”

“Uh huh.” Rachel sucked in another breath off of the joint. “Chloe.” Her voice was low, it hit hard, Chloe felt herself shiver.

“Sup.”

“I mean it. I fucking love you.” She shifted in the truck bed so that she was facing Chloe, she put her hands on top of the blanket on top of Chloe’s thigh. Even in the washed out light from the lone security light in the parking lot, she glowed. She was half-biting her lip, eyes searching Chloe’s face for god knows what, brown and green and flecked with gold.

Chloe smirked through her queasiness. “ _Nerd_.”

The shift was instantaneous. Rachel made a grab for Chloe’s beanie. Chloe tried to duck out of the way, but Rachel was quicker. She grabbed it and held it out over the asphalt.

“Rachel! Give it back, Jesus Christ.” But her voice betrayed her, she had to force the words out through her own laughter.

“Apologize, or the beanie gets it.”

“You can’t be serious.”

Rachel shook the fist with the hat in it, like that was a credible threat. She almost looked serious, but her lip curl gave her away.

“Fine, fine. I’m sorry I called you a nerd after you said a bunch of mushy shit.” Chloe took her beanie back out of Rachel’s outstretched hand and tugged it back down over her head. They were both laughing, Rachel trying and failing to keep a straight face long enough to take another hit. By the time she passed the joint back to Chloe it had practically burned down to a roach. Chloe put it out and pocketed it. It was still worth saving.

Chloe spoke, finally. “You guys are a total dream team. I think it’s good.”

Rachel glanced over her through her thick eyelashes, face perfectly still, like what Chloe said hadn’t registered. “Yeah?”

Chloe nodded. “Yeah. I was thinking about it out here, and it makes sense. Model and photographer. Both of you are all about the deep artsy shit, it works. Plus, you’re so fucking into her, dude. You wouldn’t shut up about her that entire week of the project. _Oh, Max is so smart, she knows all about LeFooFoo the great photographer, mirrors, reflections, ooh, so meaningful._ ”

“What the fuck. Chloe, Avedon isn’t even a French name—”

“My bad. _Avedon, so many ways of seeing, ooh._ I can dig it. If you guys start third wheeling me though I swear to god you can walk to L.A., I will push both of you out of the truck with my bare hands.”

Rachel half-hid a smile behind her hand. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Couldn’t. We _both_ love you.”

“Well, you’re my best friends, so. Likewise.”

Rachel’s bright eyes searched Chloe’s face again. Whatever she saw, she broke into one of her undoubtedly genuine smiles. She reached out and hugged Chloe, tight, buried her face in the crook of Chloe’s neck. She reeked, something floral, Chloe had memorized the brand of her shampoo way back when because she _fucking hated herself_ but Rachel had switched to something different, something lighter than before. Rachel let out a sigh and her breath rolled over Chloe’s skin, hot enough to burn. She drew back and wiped her eyes—no fucking way, but she was, she was _crying_. “God. Thank you.”

“No problem,” Chloe said. Her voice sounded completely normal. Not strained at all, nope.

They heard a door open behind them—Chloe craned her head around the truck, saw Max framed in the door of the motel room. She crossed the lot towards them, gingerly, arms crossed across her chest. “Join the soiree, Max.”

Max almost chipped her tooth getting in over the truck, (whispering as she tipped dangerously forward, fervently: _wowsers_ ). Chloe and Rachel both jumped up and grabbed her arms, helped hoist her into the bed. Max settled into the space next to Chloe and the wall. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, we’re good.”

Max smiled up at her. “Good.”

* * *

 

Chloe’s truck handled like a small boat, slow to turn and the brake refusing to actually _brake_ unless Max shoved her foot all the way into the floor. They hit a pothole in the road and the cabin shuddered. It knocked Chloe’s hand off her notebook, pencil line streaking across the page. Chloe swore.

“Sorry. I don’t think I should be allowed to drive this thing.”

Chloe shrugged and started to erase the stray line. “You’ve got this. Just got to find your flow.”

“My flow. Right.” Max somehow managed to get it to round the bend without sending them all careening to their deaths. Somehow.

“Besides, you’ve got to give me time to work on your sick tats. You don’t want anything but the best. Ink is forever.”

“Right.” Max bit her lip and edged the truck around another bend in the road. Her memory of agreeing to that was soaked in adrenaline—Rachel beaming at her, she had felt bigger than herself, huger, like she could absolutely handle it, like it was just ink, no big deal— _it’s going to be fine_ , she told herself. _Just a little one_.

Rachel dipped her head over the notepad, her hair brushing across the page.

Chloe turned the book towards her. “It’s still very much in development. I think this composition is good but I’m still testing it out.” Max glanced over at the page, but the car shuddered and jerked underneath her and she snapped her eyes back to the road.

“That’s so fucking good, Chloe.”

Max caught a sign for parking, thank god, and pulled off into the lot. She managed to get the truck roughly between the lines on her third try. They all stumbled out of the car and she almost hit Chloe in the face, trying to give her her keys back. Chloe laughed and plucked them out of her fingers. She put a hand on Max’s shoulder. “You did good.”

Rachel stretched and sucked in a huge lungful of air. “God, can you guys feel it?” Max shifted her weight and tried to feel _it_ , whatever it was. Rachel arched her back and stretched her hands up above her, bracelets shaking while her fingers flexed, and Max’s train of thought went up in flames. “We should go camping,” Rachel said. “It’s fucking _hot_ out. We’re supposed to, it’s a sign. When the hell has it been this hot in October before? It’s fate.”

“I don’t think any of us are important enough to influence the weather.”

She rested her fingertips on her hips and smirked at Max. “Speak for yourself. Some of us have our ways.”

Chloe cracked her neck, her back, and then finally her knuckles. “I feel super trapped in there. Like I’m going to start decomposing, you know? It’s not so bad when I’m driving, but, damn, just watching out the window sucks.” Chloe shook out her legs and her hands, at the wrists.

“Maybe you could drive back?” Max asked.

“You’ve got to learn the ways of the road, dude. Let’s go! Lake is that way, check the sign.”

Max sighed and followed her towards the trail, Rachel alongside. Rachel wove their hands together, her fingers long and slender and pulsing in Max’s own. Chloe glanced over her shoulder at them, expression blank—Rachel grinned, an almost feral tilt to her mouth, then grabbed Chloe’s hand in her own free one.

“Jesus Christ Rachel, fuck off.”

But Chloe grinned as she said it, and she didn’t pull away.

Rachel shut her eyes, the sun and shadows shimmering across her upturned face through the pines. “Just _listen_ , you guys. We’re on a ley line. Or, something. Seriously, close your eyes.”

Max closed her eyes and slowed her breath. The air was clearer up here, and lighter—lighter than she was used to. She was sucking in lungfuls and still feeling off balance, almost dizzy. It was part of what had made the drive up so disorientating. The scent of the pine snapped in her throat, she could hear the wind running through them.  She was pretty sure she wasn’t feeling whatever mojo Rachel was talking about, but she could—everything felt _bigger_ than she was used to, like the skyline could swallow her whole.

Chloe broke the silence. “What elevation are we at? It feels a little, odd. Buzzy?”

Rachel shook her and Chloe’s hand. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

They hit a clearing in the trees, the sky piercing blue through the trunks and the pale needles. There was something odd about it—Max took a few steps forward, squinting at what looked like sparkles across the sky—she stopped in her tracks.

“That’s the lake,” Max murmured, and stepped off the trail. They followed her through the trees. She stepped over a carpet of yellow needles and pine cones, keeping her eyes on the shimmering blue ahead of her. She pushed past what felt like a treeline—the land swept down in front of them for hundreds of feet, so deep and far below that the tops of the trees at the bottom of the ridge bristled, miniature, green matchsticks—and then the thick sky reflected back up at them, stretching out for what must have been miles across.

Rachel sunk to the ground, cross-legged, and rested the palms of her hands on her knees. She reached up and clasped her earring between her fingers and twisted it, slowly, staring out hard at the lake and half-smiling. The breeze brushed back the strands of her hair.

Max knelt to the ground and fumbled her camera out of her bag. She unwrapped a polaroid and loaded it, listened for the _click_ , scanned the horizon. She bit her lip. There was no way that sense of scale could survive onto a three inch by three inch square. The cliffside tumbled down to the lake, no— _reached_ out for it, those tiny pines below—Max peered into her viewfinder, and it throbbed with the blue, but it was the set of a model train. Too saturated to even be real. She moved it across the lake, looking—she could see a raven wheeling in a lazy arc below them. That could work. She took the picture on the outbreath, when her hands were the steadiest. She slid it carefully into her bag to develop and loaded up another one. “Do you two want to be in the next shot?”

Rachel opened one of her eyes and beamed up at Max. “I would love that.”

Chloe had started walking closer to the lake, following a long arc of land outward, over the ridge. She leaned over the edge, her hair whipping across her face in the wind as much as it possibly could, held down by the beanie. Rachel stood and followed her. Chloe knelt on one knee and leaned out over the edge, staring, and Rachel touched her jacket shoulder. Max peered into the viewfinder, positioned them between a cloud above them and reflected back again in the water, took another shot. She reloaded the camera.

Max swallowed down the part of her that was acutely aware of how clumsy she was, and how brutal that fall would be, and picked her way out across the ridge towards them.

What was picturesque from the treeline was gutwrenching from the edge of a cliff, the tops of the pines just little green dots in her vision, the lake a hole in the earth with the sky poking through and mountains stretching down below them, impossibly far below her. Chloe sat down and dangled her legs over the edge—Rachel joined her—Max did too, and and she saw it, saw a little of how to get the depth. “Don’t move,” she told them, and carefully caught Rachel’s torn jeans, Chloe’s black ones and her own in the lens, caught their converse shoes hanging over the downward swoop of dirt, lake to the far top of the viewfinder, and pressed the shutter.

She carefully put the camera back in her bag. “That drop is super scary.” Chloe picked up a pebble and threw it over the edge. It disappeared below them.

“Yeah, but it’s hella cool, too. The air is practically crackling up here.” Rachel lit up a cigarette, then spoke. “Why don’t you have a DSLR?”

“I kind of wondered the same thing.” Chloe tossed another rock as far as she could into the sky again. She watched it disappear into the dirt and _huffed_ a little, frowned.

They both spoke lightly, but Max still swallowed down a flash of shame. She took out the older polaroid—it was an okay shot. Not good, the crow was a little off balance, but it was okay. “I like having my stuff be retro, you know? Plus, Chloe’s dad gave it to me.”

Rachel nodded and took another puff on her cigarette. “I think it’s a cool statement, to shoot on the old instant film. It’s just, you’re so good with such a simple camera. It would be really awesome to see what you could do with a legit one. On top of the retro stuff.”

Max turned the polaroid over in her hands. “They’re really expensive,” she mumbled.

Rachel’s eyebrow shot into her airline. “You don’t have to throw around Prescott money to get an adjustable lens.”

The lake was glittering in the light—Max hunched over the polaroid in her hands. “Those are— _this_ is what I’m good at. This is what I’ve been shooting since, _forever_. I wouldn’t know what to do with a real photographer’s camera. I’m not—”

“Max.” The frown was obvious in Rachel’s voice. “You _are_ a real photographer. You’re amazing, seriously. And yeah, it would be kind of hard for you to learn at first, but you could do _so much_. You’re seriously fucking brilliant.”

“Rachel’s right.” Chloe hurled another rock out into the blue. “Your shit is dope. I get mad jealous sometimes.”

Max pulled her knees up to her chin and mumbled into them. “I wouldn’t want the money to go to waste. My parents would have to pay for it.”

Rachel shook her head. “It wouldn’t be _wasting_ —”

“I want a viking funeral. Boat full of gold, make sure you set it on fire and shit.” Chloe pushed herself up to her feet and trotted back up the ridge.

Rachel stood. “Not ready to send you off, Chloe,” she replied, instantly. “What are you doing?”

Chloe picked a rock up off the ground and sprung forward, hurtling toward the edge of the cliff. Rachel swore and put herself in Chloe’s path—Chloe hurled the rock as hard as she could over the edge and just managed to stop herself, colliding into Rachel and knocking the other woman off balance. Chloe strained in Rachel’s grip to look over the edge and whooped, pointed down below. “Yo! I got it to land in the water! See that little white speck? That was me! Shit, that is so fucking cool. It’s like a ripple _in the sky_.”

“You take years off my life.” Rachel steadied herself.

“I’ll just find some more innocent men for you to torment.” Chloe just grinned back at her, wolfishly, her face inches away from Rachel’s. “You’ll feel good as new.”

Rachel’s mouth twitched up into a lopsided smile. “My hero.”

* * *

 

Rachel fought through the fourth trek from the car, last of her bins in tow. The plastic handles dug grooves into her palms and she struggled to keep herself upright, her knees banging into it every step she took forward. It was a five minute walk to their campsite from the parking lot. She came up on the campsite, finally. Her wedge caught on a root and she felt her ankle roll under her, pain blooming hot and instant. _Fuck_. She dropped the bin.

A tree stump sat by the fire pit—Rachel hobbled over and sunk down on it. It dug into her ass. She shifted her weight. It dug into her thigh, instead. She closed her eyes and tried to find her center, keep nothing but her breathing in mind. They were going to be in L.A. in a week. She wouldn’t be able to get shoots with a bruised ankle.

_You are not twisted,_ she told it. It throbbed dully back at her.

Rachel rubbed a streak of sweat off of her forehead, felt it trickling down in between her shoulder blades, sticking the fabric of her shirt to her skin. _Absolutely disgusting_.

Maybe she had been wrong about the fated to camp thing.

“Mother Gaia isn’t being so hot to you, huh?” Rachel cracked open her eyes. Chloe had dropped her last duffle bag to the ground and was rooting through it.

“Mother Gaia and I haven’t been this intimate in a long time.”

Max rounded the curve in the trail and stepped into the clearing. She dropped her guitar case on the ground. “I’m going to go grab firewood. We’re lucky it hasn’t rained in awhile.”

Chloe saluted her with her index and middle fingers. “Sounds good. Rachel and I have the home base situation covered.”

Rachel focused on getting control of her breathing, again. She could feel a headache building behind her skull. Willow bark tea would be perfect, but her kettle was electric.

“Found it.” Chloe pulled a ball of something in a putrid shade of green out of her pack. “David gave it to me, it’s some army surplus shit or something.” She glanced up at Rachel. Rachel did not move, Rachel was busy breathing deeply as possible and trying to convince her body to _stop sweating_. Chloe smirked. “God Rachel, all of your mother earth goddess shit and you’re crapping out on me? Come on, dude. You live for this shit.”

“I’m finding my center.” Rachel ran her hand through her hair to find _a twig in it_. She swallowed her revulsion and shook it out onto the ground. _Gross_.

“God, you’re such a pussy.” Chloe unravelled the horrible green canvas and pulled what looked like a few metal poles out of the bag, stakes, and a hammer. “Whatever dude, I’ve got this shit covered anyway.”

Rachel watched Chloe wrestle with the spines of the tent in silence. For five minutes. She kept her face perfectly neutral, even as Chloe’s insults for David transitioned to creative, and then to unintelligible. After what must have been her tenth attempt, Chloe threw the mess to the ground. “This stupid shit is hella broken.”

“Uh huh.” Rachel fished a cigarette out of the carton and lit up.

“Don’t give me any of your sass, Rachel.” Chloe glared at the tent that still insisted on lying on the ground, motionless. “Maybe you’re supposed to hammer in the post-y bits first? Yeah. That’s it.” Chloe lined up a fluorescent orange stake with the ground, lifted the mallet above her head, and missed the stake entirely, pounding the ground. She glanced up to Rachel to try and see if Rachel had noticed—Rachel kept her face perfectly still—Chloe raised the mallet above her hand again and slammed it into her own thumb. She hissed and jumped up to her feet. “Jesus fucking Christ motherfucking hammer broken ass David fucking piece of shit—”

Max dropped her armful of sticks to the ground and rushed the last few steps into the clearing. “Chloe? Are you okay?”

“Oh, she’s fine.” Rachel blew a smoke ring. “She’s got this shit covered.”

“The tent is fucking broken, which _some people_ would know if they would stop communing with the ancestor spirits all around us for like, _five seconds_.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to teach you some of this? Basic mindfulness, Chloe, that’s all I’m—”

“Beside the point, Rachel! And no, keep your magic crystal shit away from me.”

Max knelt to the ground. “Chloe, you’ve got these stuck together backwards. It should be—here.”

Chloe stopped. “Oh.”

Rachel patted the trunk next to her and offered Chloe her cigarette. Chloe stepped over and sank down next to Rachel and took a puff, watched Max through the smoke. She popped up the tent within minutes.

“Okay, the fire though.” Chloe stood and started arranging Max’s branches into a pyramid in the ground. “That, I can totally handle. Check this out.” She sprayed her own hand with bug spray until it was absolutely dripping with it, and then flicked on her lighter. Her hand roared up in flames. She laughed, maniacally, over Max and Rachel both yelling her name. She shook her hand at the wrist and the flames disappeared.

“Years off my life,” Rachel repeated.

Chloe grinned back at her. “Want to try? It’s _totally_ safe. It just burns the alcohol or whatever shit is in the aerosol can.”

“I’m good.”

The sun had started to set by the time they managed to sort through all of the separate bins, found their respective sleeping bags, and then put everything back away. The pain in Rachel’s ankle dulled to nothing, and it didn’t swell—it must not have been seriously hurt, thank everything. Chloe produced a pack of hot dogs from a small cooler in her duffle bag, and they started roasting them.

Max pulled out her guitar and strummed something, head bent over the instrument’s body. Bright chords that dipped into something a little minor and then back out again. Rachel watched the flames dance over both of their faces. Max focused on her instrument with a quiet intensity that sat heavy in Rachel’s stomach, her fingers flexing gentle over the strings. Chloe stared at Max, completely enraptured, half-smiling. She had spent so much time talking about her old best friend Max in Seattle—but she hadn’t talked about this, the guitar. She had freaked out when they saw it in Max’s room, gone on about how fucking cool it was that Max had learned to play. Max had just stammered.

“Do you know anything Chloe could sing? She’s got a great voice.”

Chloe flushed up to her hairline. “You can’t say that. You’ve only ever heard me sing while we were both wasted, you don’t know.”

“I remember. You’re good.” One of the dogs looked done—nobody could remember packing them, weirdly, or the cooler with the cartoon character on the side. Joyce had probably snuck it into Chloe’s bag.

Max strummed the opening chords to something that Rachel couldn’t quite place. Chloe broke down laughing, and Max repeated the chords.

“Today is gonna be the day that they’re gonna throw it back to you!”

“ _No_.” Rachel gasped and covered her hand with her mouth, the picture of indignant and affronted.

Max laughed and kept playing.

Chloe blundered through the first verse and then forgot the words on the refrain, resorted to going “duh duh duh _wonderwall_!”

Rachel didn’t look back, there was no good to come out of it, but somehow—it would have been good to trap this on film. They were all in balance.

Eventually Max put the guitar away, and they still sat in the quiet, watching the flames. Max finally ate one of the hot dogs. Chloe was the one to break the silence. Her voice was shaking a little, but she was bracing it as best as she could, trying to talk breezily, like the answer didn’t matter to her. “Why didn’t we ever go out, Rachel?”

“I didn’t want to ruin our friendship.” Her delivery was perfect. Nonchalant, off the cuff, completely open. No hesitation. Obviously the truth, the whole truth, so simple she didn’t _need_ to think about it. Rachel didn’t lean forward and hug her knees to her chest, she kept her back straight and didn’t move her hands from where they were placed behind her.

Chloe frowned, but nodded. She didn’t push it further—not with Max there. Or did Max being there give her the guts to ask in the first place? Rachel hadn’t figured the two of them out, not quite yet. How they fit into each other.

“Chloe—” Max started to say, her face pulled into a pensive frown—

Chloe lifted up both her hands. “I meant what I said, dude. We’re good. Just—wondering.”

Max looked between the two of them, hands curled together in her lap. She was trying to work something out, her face drawn. “Were you guys ever a thing?”

Rachel looked over to Chloe, to gauge Chloe’s response—Chloe looked over at her, searching Rachel’s face with her eyes. Rachel kept her face blank. Chloe bit down on her lip and took off her beanie, ran her hands through her hair. “No,” she said, after a long, drawn out pause. Long enough for Rachel to remember Chloe giggling and complaining about the taste of her lip gloss, to remember Chloe shoved up against the wall of the truck, Chloe coming down off of a really strong high out back behind their dumpster fort, half-smiling, dazed. “Not really.”

Max’s drawn expression didn’t loosen, but she nodded.

They watched the fire for another long minute, until Chloe stood. “Well, I’m going to bed. Don’t make out without inviting me. Manners, you know.” She laughed, like it was a joke, even though her back was ramrod straight and she was clutching her beanie in her hands.

Max’s face flushed and her mouth dropped open, _oh_ , but Rachel just laughed.

“Actually, I’m pretty beat too.” Max stood. “Cool if I join?”

Chloe opened the tent flap and bowed, welcoming Max in—they both disappeared inside.

Weird.

Rachel laid out her blanket, to keep her clothes from getting ruined, and then stretched out on the hard ground and looked up at the sky through their clearing. It shouldn’t have surprised her that it was the same stars as always—she could pick out _Ursa Major_ —but it did. It felt like she was under another sky.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments/crit always welcomed!


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